Tim O’Brien: The Most Corrupt President. Ever.

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is January ninth two thousand twenty four, and Cheese, the former president of the United States has some more deep thoughts to share with us. Over the weekend, of course, he referred to the January six. Riot as hostages.

He once again mocked John McCain’s disabilities, and he suggested that, he would have done a better job than Abraham Lincoln in the civil war So once again, to dive into the twisted mind of the malignant nurse assist who would be president. Again, we are joined by our good friend Tim O’Brien, senior executive editor of Bloomberg opinion host of the podcast crash course. Tim, welcome back on the podcast.

Hi, Charlie. Good to be here.

Okay. So let’s start with just the last twenty four hours. And And again, I’m fully aware of the way in which, Donald Trump uses this sort of fire hose of awfulness to wipe away the, you know, previous awfulness and how hard it is sometimes to keep up with it. But, you know, and not over the weekend was was rather extraordinary. But in the last twenty four hours, this is what he had to say.

So he goes on some show that we’re not gonna even take the time to figure out which it was. And he talks about his hopes for a stock market crash. Let’s play this.

Well, we have an economy that’s so fragile. And the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did, what the Trump It’s just running off the fumes. And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s gonna be during this next twelve months. Because I don’t wanna be Herbert Hoover. The one president, I just don’t wanna be Herbert Hoover.

Alright, Tim O’Brien. You gotta spend a lifetime. Analyzing and studying the stable genius that we just heard there. Donald Trump hoping that the stock market crash he wants it to be in the next twelve months so that it won’t be under his watch because it’s America first. Right?

Let’s make America great again, rooting for his country.

He’s willing to visit financial disaster and misery upon millions of people. Just so he doesn’t get painted as Herbert Hoover even though we already know that he’s war in harding. And, you know, he’s he’s easily the most corrupt person to ever inhabit the White House. He’s He is rudderless, and he’s a moral vacuum, and he’s soulless, and he’s malicious. And he’s willing to create panic in people’s minds.

First off, on the US economy, as we all know, inflation has been a nightmare for average Americans, for all Americans, but specifically for working Americans who really get hit harder by those price increases. However, we’ve had robust GDP growth. We’ve had good wage growth. We’ve had good job growth. The US economy is outperforming all other Western economies and is rebounded from COVID even more smartly than China’s did.

The idea that the US economy is running on the fumes of Donald Trump’s machinations is ridiculous. And he, by the way, when he entered the White House, he wasn’t willing to give any credit to the Obama administration for giving him any tailwind. When he went in. As we also know, you know, the stock market is never a perfect proxy for the economy. It is a it is a sort of temporary gauge of investor sentiment in the short run.

And in the long run, it’s more directionally clear about having value and being reflective with a broader economy. But, again, let’s return to this idea that Donald Trump is wishing for a catastrophe in order to seal his own political destiny. And it just shows how absolutely craven he is, and how absolutely divorced from reality he continues to be.

See what really strikes me. And, again, none of this is new, but as you, as you mentioned, you know, pattern recognition is really important. That’s one of the reasons why I think we need to need to keep reminding ourselves who and what he is. You know, in this discussion of of the crash of the economy, which of course would devastate, you know, millions of businesses affect people’s livelihoods, their their retirements. His actual focus in that bite is, of course, as always, on himself.

Right. Now what would it mean for the average American, the working American, the forgotten American, But what it would mean for him? Because he doesn’t want to be remembered as Herbert Hoover. It’s always all about Donald Trump. He cannot help himself.

When he talks about this, it’s all about what it would mean for me. Not what it means for the rest of the country, but what it means for him. And This should be obvious, but I think we need to repeat it.

Just on that point, Charlie Sykes, you know, another thing is Donald Trump wanted to go into the movie business before his father basically forced him to go into the real estate business.

Yeah.

And he has this very cinematic sense of himself. And he sees himself as being cast in his own reality show. And so he constantly thinks about theatrics. So, of course, as you point out, the first place he’ll go when thinking about a stock market crashes, What does it mean for his stage presence? Not what does it mean for average Americans?

That’s a great insight. Okay. So the second thing that I wanted to bounce off you was this bizarre six minute rant that he posted, on social media last night. I won’t play the whole thing, obviously, but I know, apologize in advance for playing any of it. But, of course, this is, this was a preview of today’s big hearings, and, of course, speaking of being on stage, he is gonna be showing up at the court hearing, the appellate court hearing on his bid to be to have complete immunity for many of his crimes.

Now He is not required to be there. He has not been, you know, pulled from the campaign trail. This is completely voluntary on his part. He’s not a participant in the hearing. In fact, He is just a spectator at the hearing.

But last night, he said something. And he and he’s repeated it now several times. What appears to be I don’t know how you don’t see it this, as a direct threat that if I don’t get immunity, I will go after Joe Biden. And so here is the the man who has said, I am your retribution. Once again, rather directly and unsubtly threatening to go after Joe Biden if he is elected.

Let’s play about one minute of

They’re running a political campaign in a dirty way, even worse than they did previously, And frankly, it’s never happened in our country before. It only happens in third world countries or banana republics They’re using their department of injustice to go after his of political appointment. And this is all him. A hundred percent him. He’s the one that told him to do it, and they obey his orders.

It’s a shame. Never happened in the United States before. But it’s happened now. And he has to be careful because that can happen to him also. The next president, whoever that may be, has a statute of limitations that go back Six years.

That’s a long time, Joe. You have to be very careful. We have to guard and protect our country. We have to do what’s right for our country. You don’t indict your political opponent because he opposes the corrupt election, which you know was corrupt Everybody knows it was corrupt.

The American public knows it was corrupt. You don’t indict your political opponent. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. You know, I I I feel to him that we should play that over the, you know, the bed of the theme from the godfather. You know? Joe would be a shame of something bad woulda happened to you just saying here. I mean,

Donald strokes of cat, you know, in his dark office. Yeah.

You know, again, it’s it’s not breaking news that Donald Trump so often sounds like a mob boss, but damn, Tim.

What did you make of that?

Well, also, you know, the idea that like we are now a third world country in a banana republic. The reality is that that is what Donald Trump wants to bring us to. The justices, in the various cases, the judges Justicees in the various cases, hearing the innumerable counts that have been lodged against him aren’t doing Joe Biden’s bidding. They are trying to exercise the rule of law. And he has faced backlash of both Republican and Democratic appointees.

His own minions have called on on Kavanaugh to do trump’s bidding including his own attorney saying that Kavanaugh owes Trump, quote unquote, because Trump put him on the Supreme Court, and he’s scared. So, of course, he, as he is always done. He is trying to lash out at the foundations of our democracy and the foundations of the rule of law to portray himself as a victim. And and, you know, his role, which links us to what we talked about earlier, the theatrics around this, his role as a victim, is a profound emotional bond he shares with working class voters who also feel victimized. And he connects with them very profoundly on that level.

So as as much as there’s this ridiculous and dangerous methodology and what he’s doing, it also resonates with his supporters. And, of course, he knows it.

It resonates with his supporters, you know, whether it’s gonna resonate with the rest of America’s it’s still the the open question. Yeah. This whole idea that, you know, this has never happened before in American history. By the way, that is completely true because no president had tried to overthrow the government before. No president had actually tried to orchestrate a coup.

Yeah. Up until Donald Trump We had had a peaceful transfer of power after every presidential election. And for the first time, you know, we we did not have it. So This is, in fact, unprecedented. Okay.

So you wrote the book, you know, Trump Nation, the art of being the the Donald, and you’ve, you know, been following his you know, his business acumen over the years, I wanna get to, some of the recent revelation. But what did you make of the fact that, you know, during one of his rambling rants, over the weekend. For some reason and I talked about this with Will Saletan yesterday and I’m still puzzling about this. He felt the need to explain that he was a better negotiator than Abraham and that he could have negotiated the civil war. Yeah.

So talk to me about this because Donald Trump is not just the greatest you know, art of the deal negotiator in in American business. Apparently, he wants to be thought of as the greatest negotiator in history. Why does Donald Trump go out of his way to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln? You know, in a way that I’ve never heard any politician do. Right?

I mean, there’s no false humility here. Right?

So because he first and foremost, he correctly understands that Abraham Lincoln is probably the greatest president in US history. And there there there’s a broad historical consensus around that. There was other incredible people who will occupy that office, but Lincoln during a time of national crisis rose to the moment. And he defended the fundamental values that the country is built on. And he was willing to go to war to do that.

And that is where Abraham Lincoln’s greatness continues to reside. And Donald Trump, being a radically insecure, ignorant, and paranoid man whatever field he inhabits, he tries to compare himself to whoever is considered the best. When he was a real estate developer in New York, he routinely compared himself to the other big developers. When he became a national business figure, he routinely compared himself to Jack Welch, and then he would privately demean Jack Welch. And since he finally caught his way into the Oval Office, he now sees fit to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln.

And he he said Gosh, at least four or five times during his first run. I may be the greatest president in US history except for perhaps the great Abraham Lincoln. Yeah.

Bucking for a promotion. Yeah.

Yeah. He’s looking for a promotion. Secondly, let’s really remember that Donald Trump is a horrible deal banker and negotiator. You know, the art of the deal is essentially a non fiction work of fiction. He was routinely taken to the cleaners by people who were better dealmakers than he was.

Most famously, I think, the Plaza Hotel deal, you know, where he overpaid, he had to put it in the bankruptcy, about two years after he bought it. He got out negotiated, and other dealmakers who were shooter took him to the cleaners. So the idea then that that Donald would magically land in eighteen sixty and pull out his great negotiating skills and somehow forget about what a divisive and fundamental issue slavery was and negotiate his way around that is comical. But it’s a reflection on both. I think the party’s recent effort to recreate the reasons that the civil war occurred, the Republican Party, And then Trump’s own, again, cinematic sense of himself and wanted to insert himself into the league of great American presidents.

Going back to his insecurities, that why he’s also weirdly obsessed with John McCain. He cannot let it go John McCain, who’s not a hero. I prefer people who are not captured. You know, in my newsletter this morning, I talk about, you know, reminding people that really bizarre incident where they tried to avoid having him see the USS John McCain, you know, even after his death, he, you know, waited two days to lower the the the flag to have a mask. And then once again, over the weekend, he’s mocking John McCain.

For some reason, he couldn’t raise his arms. Yeah. For some reason, because, you know, when he was shot down in October nineteen sixty seven, He broke both of his arms and his leg and was tortured for for years and years and years.

How how obscene is this? Donna, you know, John McCain’s a war hero. Yes. John McCain served the country by any standard.

By any standard?

Donald Trump.

Yes.

And his father engineered five draft deferrals. So he didn’t have to serve in the Vietnam war. So, again, the guy who was constantly looking over his shoulder and assessing people who when push comes to shove, perform honorably and nobly on a public stage, while he cowers in the shadows, is finding reason in the present to go after those people, in this case, the great John McCain, because one McCain is dead and can’t defend himself, And secondly, it’s a reflection again of of Trump’s own self awareness that he is not a war hero himself that he avoided serving and that that still looms large in his memory. Also, John McCain cast a decisive vote that turned down Trump’s party’s efforts to overturn the ACA, and he’ll never forget that either.

This is what I’ve described in the past. Actually, I wrote back for the week standard in two thousand eighteen, you know, Donald Trump’s his, crab bucket moral university is, like, the crab bucket where he constantly pulling anyone down, you know, that anyone he he sees as more successful or braver or whatever, he feels the need to pull. If I can’t have it, nobody can’t

Charlie Sykes that point. Again, it gets it. And then why is he doing it? It’s because he has this deep self awareness that he is not very smart that he is not as successful as he claims Yeah. That he is not as brave as he claims.

Anytime he goes after somebody, it is projection, and it’s objection on what he’s the most insecure about?

You referred to Donald Trump as the nation’s most corrupt president. I think he has comfortably the the most corrupt president. You know, you mentioned Warren Harding. Warren Harding seems like a piker compared to Donald Trump. So let’s talk about this one story.

And again, you know, because of this fire hose of of information, it’s easy to to get lost. The report about the foreign cash, the Trump received while he was in office. I mean, we learned that Trump took seven point eight million dollars from foreign powers and entities while he was president This came from foreign governments and officials of twenty countries. Most of it from China, but then Saudi Arabia cutter. Others also chipped in relatively modest amounts.

Now This report was issued by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, but you said this ought not to be dismissed as a partisan hit job. Why not?

Because it’s fundamental about good government. I I think it’s a bipartisan standard that we wanna make sure that people who are working in the public interest and hold high public office can’t be bribed, and that money will not influence how they make policy. It’s a standard that applies to members of both Charlie Sykes a standard that applies across the federal government as we’ve come to learn the Supreme Court and the president Both are are relatively immune and aren’t beholden to most of the ethics guidelines that apply to other branches of the government. I think there were reasons the framers built it that way. I think they felt that if you began figuring out ways to create parameters around the president’s actions, the president wouldn’t be able to take any action at all.

They, however, the framers were also deeply aware that presidents could be bribed, hence the famous emoluments clause that doesn’t allow a president to receive gifts or compensation from foreign entities without the consent and approval of Congress. And the report that the Democrats on the over house oversight committee produced noted that not once in any instance in which Trump received this stream of payments, did he seek congressional approval? Secondly, this is just a small piece of a possibly much larger pie. The members of the Congress had to wrestle with Trump and his team to get the information that created the seven point eight million dollar figure Most of that money came from China, a major Chinese bank with a tenant in Trump Tower. Trump later refused to take action, against that bank and other Chinese banks, even though Republicans wanted to do it because there was a concern that they were funding Korea’s nuclear arms build up.

So is that a quid pro quo? It sure looks like it, but we won’t know unless there’s more investigation. But, again, it comes back to this fundamental issue that financial conflicts of interest are problematic for any politician regardless of party.

And as you wrote in your column, last week, the quickest path to Trump’s heart has always involved plopping a bag of cash on his desk, and battle hardened realist overseas were seeking geopolitical military economic advantages over the US are well aware of that. This is not a secret. I mean, back in twenty seventeen, You actually wrote in that seven years ago that Trump entered the White House with more potential business and financial conflicts of interest than any president in US history. So a lot of this is not a surprise. A lot of it happened really in broad daylight.

And to your point about projection, it’s interesting how virtually every Trump Soundbite, every Republican Soundbite now talks about the corruption of Joe Biden, and now Joe Biden allegedly took money from foreign countries. And again, this pattern, this playbook, which again, is not subtle. It is wide open in public, that, you know, whatever he has done, he’s going to accuse others of doing. So we have all this documentation of the money that he’s received that Jared Kushner has received. And yet Republicans, I was gonna say poised to impeach Joe Biden, but I don’t think they have the majority to do it.

But This is part of the pattern and practice of Donald Trump, and there’s nothing subtle about it.

You know, Jerry Kushner, like, a two billion dollar investment in his asset management firm from Saudi Arabia. Jerry Kushner had no discernible success as an investor. Who’s a junior jammer in the investment world by any standard. I don’t think the saudis decided to to pad his investment nest because they thought he was a particularly unique and sharp investor. I think it was simply about buying access.

I think this animates in theory, why people are concerned about Hunter Biden’s proximity to his father. That’s a legitimate, good government concern. But I don’t think Hunter Biden engineered two billion dollars in payments from anybody as far as I can tell. It is animated the prosecution, Bob Fernandez, for what allegedly appears to be, you know, comically corrupt activities. It’s what led George Santos to lead Congress These are bipartisan moments all around the same issue, whether someone’s drifting.

And not only was Trump the most financially conflicted person ever end of the White House. He was the one who had the least moral and ethical and personal standards around his own behavior. It was a fairly wicked combination. I don’t think the framers could have imagined this kind of financial godzilla walking into the Oval Office.

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Get fifty five percent off at babbel dot com slash bulwark spelled b a b b e l dot com slash bulwark. Rules and restrictions may apply. Okay. So I wanna stay on this corruption issue for a little while because you point out, like, we all know about the love letters with the North Korean, you know, thug leader, you know, Kim Jong un. We all know about the embarrassing funding over Vladimir Putin, but also Trump Trump also spoke about real estate deals in North Korea, and he pursued that deal for a tower in Moscow as he ran for president in twenty sixteen.

Another one of the little details that got dropped into the memory hole. And while the amount of money might not mean as much to a really, really rich man, I mean, the fact that the oversight committee found that five point five million of the seven point eight came from China. As you point out, this state owned bank is one of the largest tenants in Trump Tower. I mean, the the entanglements are stunning. And it’s almost as if Trump thinks, okay, if I’m going to be a grifter, I’m gonna grip on a mass international global I’m gonna make it so big you can’t keep up with.

But again, it’s not subtle and it’s not particularly hard to understand, is it?

It’s not. It’s really not complex. There’s just a clear standard here that someone who takes money from a foreign entity is beholden to that foreign entity, and therefore, they are a national security threat if they’re the president of the United States.

That, by the way, is now a related point because it’s not just grifting corruption, you make the point that this is a real national security threat. And so talk to me about the implications for a second trump term in national security terms.

Well, so imagine someone who has escaped two impeachments, several criminal and civil indictments, and an election loss. And despite all that comes back into the Oval Office, he is going to feel empowered to do whatever he wants. And whatever he wants to do is usually two things. Make a lot of money regardless of how you make it. And enhance his own ability to loom large on the stage.

And he’s gonna go in with the third piece in the next term, which is revenge, which we talked about earlier, in regards to Biden, putting a revenge off the table for the time being, and just looking at the national security issue, how is Donald Trump going to position the US vis a vis Vladimir Putin in Ukraine? How is Donald Trump going to look after US interest in the Asia Pacific region where you have a more than ascended China, the, you know, the world second, most powerful economy and military power now with our allies in the region worried about how we’re going to stand up. To China in the long run. If China decides that can be solved for them by simply giving Trump more access to Chinese markets, and Chinese real estate as they did, by the way, during his first term, when they fast tracked trademark agreements for Trump’s relatives, None of this is hard to imagine it in a perilous world, the world we’re facing right now with a major conflict in the Middle East, a major conflict in Europe, and looming conflicts in the Asia Pacific region. We’re going to have a president enter the White House who is ignorant about the dynamics involved in all of those conflicts and is also dead set on padding his financial nest and not looking after the interests of American voters.

Well, in in case there was any question in in listeners’ minds about, well, why does this matter? I think that certainly answers it. Okay. So let let’s switch to the New York a fraud trial, which again is not necessarily the most important thing going on in Donald Trump’s life right now. But you, you talked with Andrew Weisman recently on your podcast and one of the takeaways was to expect a really big verdict this year against Trump money wise as well as possibly permanently banning Trump and his company from doing business in New York.

Again, You know, since then, since you talk Andrew Weisman, Attorney General Latisher James has asked the trial judge to impose a three hundred and seventy million dollar penalty on the Trump organization. Now I think people know that, basically, he’s already lost this lawsuit. They were having a hearing. They’ve been having hearings on what the damages would be. So what do you think the fallout from that case is going to be?

And when are we going to see it?

I don’t think there’s gonna be electoral fallout.

Right.

I think we’ll probably see something this month. I think we’re gonna get a ruling this week. I think Trump will appeal it, and we’ll have to see how long the appeal runs. But the net result of this one is an end I think of the Trump legacy in New York, which was never a great titan of business legacy, like, say, the Rockefeller’s or a great political dynasty like the Kennedy’s, although Trump likes to compare himself to those kinds of dynasties and his family. You know, they’re, like, essentially, a situation comedy version of all of those families.

Nonetheless, Trump’s fortune is built upon his father’s hard work as an entrepreneur in New York, and then branding the family’s name as inextricably bonded with Manhattan and Manhattan Real Estate and Manhattan wheeling and dealing. And this ruling, if it goes completely wrong for him, will involve he and his eldest sons, and the family business being permanently banned from doing business in the state of New York, and they will pay a heavy penalty. And I think Trump has been incredibly exercised over this because he realizes what it means reputationally. It is the state in which he was born and where his family built its fortune, telling him get out of Dodge, you’re not the kind of person we want here.

One detail I think is worth mentioning for our podcast listeners is that Donald Trump once sued you over details you provided in your two thousand five book, Trump Nation, because you were one of the first people to say, yeah, a lot of Trump’s numbers and claims are complete Bulwark. So again, this is not something new. This has been a long time pattern that he’s been inflating the value. He’s been lying about things. But it is interesting how that caught up with him.

And one of the strongest parts of the attorney general’s lawsuit was Trump’s claim that his apartment at the top of Trump Tower was three times its actual size, which seems to be an objective fact. Right? You can’t just say while I was thinking that the market would change or this was aspirational. It’s either what it is or it is this mythical fake, fraudulent three times a size, and that’s really gonna sink him. I think Andrew, Weisman called that evidence a rock crusher.

For Donald Trump. So years and year, decades and decades, and it’s finally caught up with it.

And it’s documented as you noted. You know, it’s not stuff you can just simply walk around when we litigated with Trump after he sued me for libel. I was at the New York Times at the time. You know, the book covered a a wide variety of subjects in his business, personal, and political life, but he focused on three pages of the book that showed this sort of decades long farcical dialogue he had had about how rich he was and how he used that to lead the media along quite effectively. He got outsized tension relative to his actual accomplishments.

I think it allowed him to get meetings with banks. He might not otherwise have had And again, it was a reflection of his own insecurity. Where am I on the packing order? I wanna be seen as one of the titans of American business and one of the wealthiest people in the United States even though I’m not. And he sued me essentially saying that my sources who were insiders in his universe who said he was worth a fraction of what he claimed he was and that he bloviated because of his insecurity.

He said that defamed him. He said simply raising the question about whether or not he was as rich as he claimed to be was defamatory. He lost that in spades. During the course of litigation, we deposed him for two days for two eight hour sessions. So sixteen hours of deposition.

And during that while he was under oath, we simply we we got access to his tax returns, his bank, and business records, and other documents that actually put numbers in reality around his claims, and we found at least almost three dozen instances. In which he had inflated how much he got paid for speaking engagements, how much he sold a condo for, and on and on and on. And he couldn’t deny these things under oath because they were there on the paper right in front of him. And they were contradicted by public statements he made. And I think that’s the heart of of Tish James’s case now in New York.

Let’s double back. I think probably do, we’re probably gonna be doubling back to something you said earlier in in the program. But what do you make of the theater of Donald Trump today? Where he is showing up in Washington, DC for this hearing. He does not have to be there.

He could be an Iowa campaign. He could be a New Hampshire campaign. He has chosen. He thinks it is obviously in his interest to show up at this appellate court hearing on his immunity which he’s almost certainly going to lose. So in terms of the Donald Trump, the theater of Donald Trump’s mind, what does he think is happening today?

Well, he knows that it’s a pivotal decision in the prosecution

Yeah.

Of him. And so he he knows it’ll be media attention. So he wants to partake in that moment to again portray himself as the victim as someone being unreasonably prosecuted and the prosecutors are instruments of Joe Biden’s political whims as opposed to actually enforcing the rule of law, which is in the interest of every American.

He’s looking at the polls. I mean, there’s a certain, you know, lizard instinct here. He’s been looking at the polls every time, he’s been indicted or there’s been a court act it seems to raise his numbers with Republican primary voters because, of course, they rally around him. And so to do this, you know, days before the Iowa caucuses, you know, weeks before what’s happening in New Hampshire primary, he thinks is going to you know, again, suck the oxygen out of the room, portray himself as a victim, and sort of demand that everybody, you know, pull around him. And I think that may actually work for him.

The question is once he seals this nomination, and that’s not going to be that long from now. I mean, do you agree that he’s gonna wrap up the nomination probably by Yes. By the middle of March, it’ll all be done.

Despite Nikki Haley’s recent surge in New Hampshire, I I don’t think anybody’s gonna take the nomination away from.

So he’s gonna look like this this towering, you know, dynamo. Jonathan Last had a really interesting piece yesterday in his newsletter. Know, and he’s gonna look like he’s got all this momentum, but he will have really been untested because now he shifts to a general electorate. And I wonder what you think about how it’s going to play out, whether these theatrical, you know, I am in the dock I am the defendant. I am in court houses all the time, plays once you get out of that relatively safe space of the Republican primary.

Because with the exception of Chris Christie, nobody’s really laid a glove on him. Nobody’s gone after him. He’s dealing in a know, kind of an alternative reality universe where this stuff all redounds to his favor. What is gonna be the post nomination environment for Donald Trump defendant. What do you think?

That’s such a good question, Charlene. It’s a really fundamental question because it gets at the electoral we’re dealing with right now. Of course, Donald Trump is dictum of central prosecutors plays well in the manga universe. And the Republican primary process right now is deeply, deeply influenced and beholden to the thirty percent or so of hard right Republican voters that Donald Trump has a a hammer lock on. Unfortunately for Donald Trump in a general election, that voting block is not enough to get him up over the hill.

And I think this is going to be a close election. I think it’s going to be, you know, on a knife’s edge. I think it will come down to blocks of independent and moderate voters in a handful of swing states who will determine the outcome of this election. And and I think The question then is, well, what do they think about these prosecutions? And how do they view Donald Trump’s rodeo clown show?

And I think in twenty sixteen, that voting block wasn’t that familiar with what he really was. And it to their, I think, regret didn’t spend enough time getting to know him before they either voted for him or didn’t care if he got elected. No. They know. And they’ve seen that.

I I think Pew or or one of the other pulling out that had a a poll a few weeks ago that showed that the Trump indictments don’t matter to the far right maga supporters. They do matter to Democrats of all stripes, but they also increasingly matter to middle of the road independent and moderate voters, and that they actually are concerned about this. And that if he goes to trial and you actually get a public airing of the charges against him, that could be pivotal. So I don’t think his victim act necessarily has national legs.

I think you’re right. Wanted to just sort of bounce something else off you. I I always hesitate to deal psychology of of Donald Trump, but since you have spent so much time thinking about this, I mean, all of us at the various times. Are gonna have moments where we become a little bit unhinged. We become angry.

We become depressed. We lash out. We we engage in certain behavior. And for the vast majority of people, what happens is that there’s somebody who lie, you know, well, you know, there’ll be some checks. Somebody will say, you know, This is damaging.

This is dangerous. You’re gonna get fired if you do that. You’re going to, you know, get yourself in trouble. There would be some guardrail limit break on all of that. In Donald Trump’s mind right now, it seems that he’s realizing no matter what I said, no matter who I attack, no matter what norm I violate, no matter what I threaten, it doesn’t matter.

I can do or say anything, so he is completely unchained. I mean, this is this is raw, unplugged Donald Trump. And I wonder, you know, how that plays out because he doesn’t think there are any limits. And maybe right now, that may be true with Republican voters. And that’s goes back to this question of the post nomination, Donald Trump.

Because just in the last week, he came out with a document, basically reiterating the big lie. I mean, he is totally doubling down on this, you know, doubling down on endorsement of January six. Knowing Donald Trump He’s constantly gonna ramp that up, but you ramp that up for these voters you just talked about might play very differently than it’s played right now. But I don’t see any indication that Donald Trump is gonna moderate, shift to the center, or control himself between now and November.

No. And and if and if he’s not the nominee at the RNC, he’ll hold his own convention.

Yeah. He’ll burn it down.

He’ll burn it down. You know, we talked earlier about how the framers never envisioned someone entering the Oval Office with Donald Trump’s financial conflicts and his lack of ethics around those things. I also think no one could have imagined someone going into the Oval Office who is as uniquely craven and unhinged as Donald Trump is. And the reason he’s willing, you know, when when you started off this question by saying the rest of us feel anxious when we’ve hurt someone we love, or we’ve acted inappropriately in a given situation. You know, we’ve let our own demons get the best of us.

None of that stuff ever enters in to Donald Trump’s thinking in part because he’s a deeply damaged person psychologically and emotionally, but it’s also because through a sort of freak series of accidents, he’s never had to be accountable for his own behavior. He has been protected from the consequences of his own actions his entire life. He was born into a wealthy family, and his father protected him from his academic and social shortfalls and his business shortfalls, and essentially gave him a ladder to early success. And then he became a celebrity and a reality TV show celebrity benefited from all the forgiveness the media gives celebrities around the truth and performance and personal behavior. And then on top of that, he becomes president of the United States, and he does accrue a certain amount of legal immunity.

And each step of the way, he’s never had to change course because he hasn’t been held accountable for his own actions. And so, like, normal adults who become ideally the end result of learned behaviors and regret and that desire to self improve, Trump is just this energizer bunny of disastrous and self absorbed decision making, and he will never change because he’s never had to be held accountable for it. Until now, but, you know, the clock is ticking.

Yeah. And, I mean, as he’s always a creature of that unaccountability in which you know, may explain why he’s he’s going the direction that he is going Tim O’Brien. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Tim O’Brien is a Senior Executive editor of Bloomberg opinion host of the podcast crash course, political analyst at MSNBC, former editor reporter for the New York Times author Trump nation, the art of being the Donald published in the before times. If only we had been warned, right, Tim, thanks for joining me.

Thanks, Charlie.

And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow, and we will do this all over again. Bower podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.